Keep Faith Alive in the Summertime - By Debbie Kolacki of PRC-Practical Resources for Churches
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Keep Faith Alive in the
Summertime
By Debbie Kolacki of
PRC- Practical Resources for Churches
www.prcli.org
1
Sunday Morning Summer
Sunday School? Or not?
Reasons to have a summer Sunday
school on Sunday mornings:
Christian education for
children is so important that
we need to offer it year round
and some families only come
to church on Sunday mornings.
If there is no Sunday school, there is less chance that parents will want to come to
church.
If the worship service is geared strictly to adults, children who attend may be
disruptive and/or learn that church is boring.
Reasons not to have a summer Sunday school on Sunday mornings:
The teachers need a break and we can’t find anyone else to teach.
Teachers prepare lessons and then no children show up.
The worship service is child-friendly and the children and adults (including
parents) enjoy being in worship together.
Will you offer summer Sunday school on Sunday mornings? If the answer is
“yes” then consider this:
Ask your regular teachers if they would like the summer off. If so, look for
summer teachers among those who might not want to teach during the regular
school year. Consider college students on summer break, school employees who
have the summer off, retirees summering in the area, or perhaps a family who
would enjoy teaching together. Make sure you follow your church’s child
protection policy in recruiting teachers.
If summer attendance is low, run your program as a one room Sunday school.
There is a curriculum called the One Room Sunday School as well as other
curriculum which offer lessons for children in a multi-graded classroom. A list of
appropriate curriculum is included in the back of this booklet.
Do something fun and different in your Sunday school for the summer.
Introduce computers.
Focus on a mission project for a particular country; decorate your classroom
and do activities related to that country. Issue “passports” to the children and
stamp them each week.
Focus on a mission for an organization such as Heifer International or Habitat
for Humanity. Heifer offers free curriculum and there is a Habitat for
Humanity VBS available for purchase.
2
Use a rotation lesson where you focus on one theme or Bible story and then
explore it in a different way each week: games, science, art, video, food, etc.
Focus on nature and creation and get the children outdoors when weather
permits.
Use a Vacation Bible School (VBS) curriculum for Sunday school.
If your church is having a VBS, keep your decorations up and continue the
theme in your Sunday school lessons.
Focus on the church year, the various colors and seasons.
Introduce children to spiritual practices. Take a trip to a local labyrinth or
borrow a floor labyrinth from your resource center. You can also use paper
finger labyrinths or have the children make their own labyrinth.
Base your lessons on a popular children’s book series. There are numerous
ones available for the Narnia and Harry Potter series.
Go back to Bible times. Hang fabric and bring in rugs to create a Bible
storytelling tent. Let the kids wear simple Bible time costumes, eat Bible
foods, and do Bible time activities.
Get some popcorn going and turn your Sunday school into a movie theater
with any of the many Biblical and Christian video series that are available.
Invite members of the congregation to share their gifts and talents. Fishing,
cooking, weaving, etc. can all be shared with the children and used to
supplement Bible lessons.
Some Free Curriculums for Download
Several free downloads are available from the UCC (United Church of Christ) and
Christian Church: Disciples of Christ on the KidsToKids website. Kids to Kids is a
children's mission program that gives children in North America opportunities to learn
about and serve children from other parts of the world. The VBS programs available
are:
Journey to Columbia
Journey to Congo
Journey to India
Bethany Village Live!
God’s Love Is Everywhere, where children visit a different mission site for each
of five days.
The Episcopal Church also offers free downloads that can be used for VBS.
The Abundant Life Garden Project is an interactive, scripture-based children’s
curriculum for those who seek to share the ministry of the Episcopal Church’s Relief &
Development program. It’s for elementary age children and explores five areas: water,
seeds, soil, animals, and harvest. A children’s program on malaria which can be used as
a VBS curriculum is Rita Mosquito.
3
You can also find other free programs online, such as The Armor of God and
BigHeart Farms based on the fruit of the spirit.
Will you offer summer Sunday school on Sunday mornings? If the answer is “no”
then consider this:
Is it possible to have “Sunday school” at a time other than Sunday morning?
Consider an evening or weekday morning and consider an intergenerational
class as well.
Host one time programs at the church and/or plan some outings and field trips.
Stay in touch with students by e-mail, snail mail, or a Sunday school Facebook
page. You can even set up an online virtual classroom with simple assignments,
links to Christian children’s websites, etc.
Vacation Bible School? Or not?
If you usually have VBS then consider
this:
If you have a director and a willing
staff then you’re probably looking
forward to another great VBS
program.
If you’ve had VBS in the past but
aren’t sure about continuing, look at the positives and negatives and see whether
it’s time to make some changes. If it’s too hard to get volunteers or children
during the day, try an evening VBS. You can either meet for five evenings in or a
row or pick one night of the week and then meet on that night over the course of
five weeks. Some churches do their entire VBS program on one Saturday and
some have experimented with having VBS after Sunday worship. You might
consider an intergenerational VBS. Be creative and don’t be afraid to try
something new.
If you’ve never had VBS before, why not consider it now?
Whether you’ve had VBS before or not, it might be a good idea to team up with another
church (or several churches) in your area and do a joint VBS.
4
Special Summer Programs
How about some intergenerational or special children’s programs?
Summer’s the perfect time for a one time laid-back program either during the day or in
the evening. Depending on the program, you might find that right after Sunday
worship is a convenient time for many people. Consider these:
An arts festival to show off children and adults’ creative works which can be created
either at home or at church.
A summer party with a theme such as the 4th of July or a safari.
A stargazing evening; perhaps someone in your congregation has a telescope and
would like to host this event. Appropriate scripture readings and hymns could be used
to add a spiritual component.
A movie evening. Families could either watch the movie together or it could be a chance
to give parents an evening out together.
A storytelling event. If there’s a park nearby where you can make a campfire and roast
marshmallows that would make it even more fun.
How about an old-fashioned square dance? Children and adults can enjoy this together.
A game night where everyone brings their favorite board games to play.
An ice cream social. Children and adults will enjoy creating their own sundaes and the
fixings are easy to provide.
A tea party, perhaps for mothers and daughters.
A Christmas in July celebration.
A preschool story hour.
A scavenger hunt.
Field trips to a local park, museums or a ballpark, such as the Long Island Ducks. A
nature hike could include conversation about God’s creation.
A morning of service, perhaps to do yard work at a homebound church member’s
house, followed by doughnuts.
A book discussion, either with children alone, or children and parents together.
A talent show.
A summer reading club.
5
No Matter What, Stay in Touch
Ways to stay connected even if you don’t see your
students in person
E-mail is easy, inexpensive, and unobtrusive.
You can send e-mails to families with ideas
and activities for spiritual development.
E-mails can include a simple “thinking of
you message,” attachments of a Bible story
with coloring and activity sheets, a contest where
children answer questions about Bible stories, or links to
Christian websites for children. Encourage correspondence and invite parents
and children to ask any questions about the Bible or faith that they may have.
Postcards are available from Christian publishers that can be sent to children. It
takes only a minute or two to write a simple message and the postage cost is less
than a regular letter.
Pair up children with “church buddies”; buddies can be other children or adults.
Encourage church buddies to pray for each other, call, e-mail, etc.
Create a Facebook page so families can share what’s going on in their lives
during the summer. You can restrict access to the page to ensure privacy.
Create an online Bible study or online book club for children and parents to do
together.
Get a summer mascot, such as a stuffed animal and give him/her a cute name.
Take him to various places, either locally or when you go on vacation, and take
photos or video of him, then post these to Facebook or e-mail them. Your mascot
can also give weekly advice or have a weekly prayer.
An alternative idea is to let families borrow your mascot when they go on
vacation and share photos and video.
Use your church website to stay in touch with families. Create special pages for
children and youth with links to appropriate websites and suggestions for
service and outreach. Update throughout the summer with ideas to appreciate
God’s creation and promote earth-friendly family activities, such as hiking and
biking. Include a different prayer concern each week. Record guided meditations
and post them as audio files.
If you have a reproducible music CD from your VBS or Sunday school
curriculum, make copies for all the families in your church to play at home or in
the car.
Set aside a bulletin board in your church where information about family
vacations and activities can be posted. Invite families to send a postcard to the
church when on vacation and post these on the bulletin board.
6Partner with Parents
Give families the tools they need to continue the learning
Provide a take-out church box to help your families continue their faith
formation during the summer, within their own timeframe.
Create your own “faith chests” with things to help parents share faith with their
children including table tents with mealtime prayers, a fill-in-the blanks prayer
outline, discussion questions for the car or dinnertime, and craft activities.
Clean out your Sunday school office and invite families to take old curriculum,
craft supplies, etc. home for summer activities.
Invite your families to visit your church library to take out books, music CDs,
and DVDs for the summer.
Have a book/music/DVD sale with children’s Bible studies, devotionals, and
other Christian books for children and parents to read together, as well as CDs of
children’s Christian music and children’s Christian DVDs. Contact a Christian
store or publisher to see if they will let you borrow resources on consignment.
Provide a prayer bear and journal for families to take on vacation. Suggest that
they record in the journal where they went and what blessings they experienced
in that place.
Give out a list with information about VBS programs in your area even if your
church is having their own VBS; encourage your families to attend more than
one VBS.
Suggest ways for families to incorporate God into their daily live such as a
“creation picnic” where they talk about and give thanks for the many wonderful
things in nature that God has given us.
Give families ideas for summer service projects. Suggestions could include
providing food for a food pantry or going through old toys and donating them to
a homeless shelter or the church thrift shop.
Send children home with materials to create their own books over the summer.
They can write, draw, or color in the books. Different theme ideas are “God’s
Creation,” “God’s Gift of Water,” and “God’s Night Sky.” Have children bring
their books to Sunday school in September and take a photo of the children with
their books. You can also create a video of the children talking about their books.
Encourage families to have a bedtime ritual that includes reading a Bible story
and prayer. Invite parents to make a small cross on the foreheads of their
children as a blessing before going to sleep at night…..if your faith experience
uses holy water, bless the children with holy water as well. Encourage your
families to practice Faith Five.
Encourage families on vacation to include visiting a church for worship as part of
their travel plans. Ask them to bring back a worship bulletin and complete these
sentences on the front of the bulletin, “We saw ______.” “We heard ______.” “We
thank God for ______.”
7Curriculum Geared toward Classrooms with Multiple Ages
If you don’t have many kids in Sunday school during the summer, you can switch to a
one room or multi-graded curriculum. This is also called multi-age or broadly-graded
curriculum. It’s set up so that there are activities for children of all different ages. There
are usually activities to do as a group as well as activities for specific ages. There may
also be tips for having children of different ages work together. The One Room Sunday
School curriculum is ecumenical and is for ages 3-12. Some curriculums that have
resources for various age levels also publish a multi-graded version of their curriculum.
Some other multi-age curriculums or curriculums that include multi-age components
are:
Feasting on the Word
Growing in Grace and Gratitude
Shine: Living in God’s Light
Living the Good News
Seasons of the Spirit
Please consider making a
donation on our website
so that we can continue
to offer our booklets free
of charge.
www.prcli.org
Revised January 2019
8You can also read
